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Science 13 October 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5490, pp. 288 - 290
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5490.288
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Perspectives

EVOLUTION:
The Benefits of Allocating Sex

Stuart A. West, Edward Allen Herre, Ben C. Sheldon

Organisms allocate resources to male and female offspring in a process called sex allocation. In a Perspective, Stuart West and colleagues discuss what sex allocation tells us about evolution by natural selection and how sex allocation can be applied to understanding the mating structure of parasitic protozoans.

S. A. West is at the Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK. E-mail: stu.west{at}ed.ac.uk E. A. Herre is at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Republic of Panama. B. C. Sheldon is in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.

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